Conference Agenda

This contribution aims to fill a gap in the literature on sex trafficking by shifting the focus from trauma to resilience, protective factors, and personal growth. Within a social constructionist perspective, Dialogic Self Theory is adopted with the aim of exploring narrative and dialogic spaces for the various positions of the self that express narratives about strengths and the ability to transform adverse experiences into growth and positive outcomes. A qualitative survey was conducted on eight women who survived sex trafficking. Through reflective thematic analysis, four main themes were co-generated: general distrust of others, (re)building trust through social support, coping strategies, and relationship with the body. These findings represent an innovative contribution that aims to fill a significant gap in this field, amplifying survivors' ego positions and narratives, providing valuable insights into key aspects such as trust restoration, personal strengths, coping strategies, body narratives, including self-acceptance, self-care, and the centrality of motherhood. This knowledge can support psychotherapists and social workers working with survivors and lay the groundwork for future research.

Identity remains a foundational construct in organizational research, yet dominant theories continue to draw primarily on modernist and postmodernist assumptions. In response to the enduring tension between these paradigms, metamodernism has emerged as a worldview that oscillates between their underlying logics. Despite its growing relevance, little is known about how metamodernism informs identity construction. The paper examines how metamodern identity construction differs from modern and postmodern identity constructions. How are stories told differently in modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism? What do these forms of storytelling reveal about how humans are currently making sense of the world and thus their identities? Consequently, the paper advances a metamodern perspective on identity by theorizing two constitutive features: oscillation between multiplicities, which transcends the distinction between identity work and identity play, and informed naïveté, a stance that blends sincerity with reflexive irony. These features illuminate how individuals navigate conflicting values through a “structure of feeling” oriented toward an unattainable yet generative utopia. The paper critiques the limitations of existing identity theories, draws on dialogical self theory, and argues that metamodern identity is best studied through a dialogic approach, one that captures the tensions, ambivalences, and oscillations inherent in identity construction. Traditional narrative approaches, while valuable for exploring coherence and continuity, often struggle to account for the dynamic interplay between sincerity and irony, stability and flux. The paper also identifies authenticity and power relations as central concerns. Finally, the paper elaborates on modernism’s striving for utopia and relational being as two implicit elements of metamodernism that can generate tension, underscoring a key leadership role in managing this potential conflict.Together, these insights open new directions for theorizing identity in the metamodern era.

This study examines the self-reconfiguration process of a young adult with refugee background, using Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as the analytic framework. The dataset consists of anonymized interview dialogues and verbatim excerpts, edited with minimal correction to preserve meaning and integrated into a single narrative text. The narrative was segmented into meaning units and coded for I-positions (self-positions), voices (internalized social, institutional, and relational “voices”), dominance (patterns of positional dominance and marginalization), and the functions of meta-position and promoter positions. Findings indicate that in the middle-school period, a dominant coalition of I-positions—I-as-adapter, I-as-achiever, I-as-responsible-one, I-as-recognition-seeker, and I-as-insecure-self—was supported by an internalized school institutional voice emphasizing conformity and self-responsibility. During this period, I-as-needing-care was marginalized, and distress was communicated through indirect means (e.g., intensified physical/psychological unwellness) rather than direct help-seeking. From the first year of university onward, a counselor’s feedback, family dialogue (especially with a sibling), and a practice of growth-visibility through self-recording functioned as promoter positions, enabling a meta-position and a reorganization of dominance toward I-as-self-authored, I-as-boundary-setter, and a repertoire of reasoned responses to stereotypes. In the present, the participant describes ongoing exposure to discrimination, yet with reduced depletion due to strengthened boundary-setting and explanatory responding, and resistance to being positioned as a “representative” of refugeehood or religion. Implications emphasize (a) designing educational and support environments that expand dialogical space rather than intensify conformity demands, (b) avoiding representational pressure (allowing “to speak” or “not to speak”), and (c) supporting growth-visibility beyond grades and test scores.

In Japanese educational settings, learners with refugee or forced-migration backgrounds are increasingly present; however, outward “successful adaptation” does not necessarily imply internal integration or recovery. This presentation introduces a methodological approach for translating a Dialogical Self Theory (DST) analysis into a pattern language tailored to educational and support contexts in Japan.

The study is based on an in-depth narrative analysis of a young adult living in Japan with forced-migration experience, including an application for refugee status within the Japanese institutional context. Anonymized interview dialogues were minimally edited into a coherent, time-ordered narrative and segmented into 25 meaning units. These segments were coded using DST constructs, including I-positions (self-positions), internalized voices (institutional, societal, familial, and support-related), patterns of dominance and marginalization, and the functions of meta-position and promoter positions. Rather than foregrounding detailed analytic findings, this presentation focuses on how these analytic components were translated into a pattern language.

A pattern language is a structured collection of reusable descriptions that link recurring problems in practice with effective ways of addressing them in context. In this study, each analytic insight was translated into an actionable “pattern” using a consistent context–problem–solution–conclusion format and anchored with traceable evidence to maintain transparency between qualitative analysis and practice-oriented guidance. Through iterative refinement, the patterns were organized into an interconnected system of 30 patterns structured around three core patterns: (1) Expanding Dialogical Space, (2) Triggering Self-Reconfiguration, and (3) Protecting Autonomy from Positioning. These core patterns connect three categories addressing environmental design in Japanese schools and support institutions, promoter- and meta-position-driven change, and responses to representational pressure.

The resulting pattern language offers educators and support practitioners a shared, transferable vocabulary for expanding dialogical space, legitimizing help-seeking, reducing representational demands(including the option to speak or not to speak), and supporting forms of growth visibility beyond grades and test scores.